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Radioactive Bank Run

By John Batchelor on November 30, 2009 at 10:00 PM in Current Affairs

Regime Hygiene.  
Tehran’s aim is to goad and provoke the powerless propaganda of ElBaredi and the IAEA and its feckless sponsor the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5 + 1), and the plan is perfectly in place for a winter of POTUS blame-shifting, finger-pointing and pomposity.

 Tehran uses this confrontation to deepens its grip on the Iranian national mania for pride of place, for supremacy, even if it comes at the hands of usurpers, liars, billies and sadists such as the Ahmandinejad coup cronies.

The Supreme leader is sickly and failing, and his successor is likely a reload brute, Yazdi, who commands the savage obedience of the murderous IRGC.

All this regime hygiene is best handled behind closed doors and without student whiners parading in the street, and so the noise about the nukes provides wonderful media screening.  That is the chief use of the IAEA.  The secondary use is to frighten the opposition in the Gulf, such as the House of Saud and the Arab princelings.

Yemen Proxy War.

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Note that the news tape running below the Reuters video of the Iranian TV broadcast of the Majlis includes English subtitles about Yemen.

One of them mentions Houthis.  This is a Shia sect living in North Yemen that is now at war both with the South Yemen government and the Saudi National Guard.  More importantly, the Houthis are clients of Tehran and receive arms and Al Quds force aid from the IRGC.  North Yemen civil war is a proxy war between Tehran and Riyadh.  Advantage to the aggressor, that is, the Houthis.

The whole of the Arab peninsula is watching the contest to know where to put the bets.  Now with the Dubai World bank run, the whole Gulf is watching Riyadh to see if it will back up the deprived Yemen central government and backstop Abu Dhabi’s potentate problems.  Michael Vlahos, author, “Fighting Identity,” and I have been studying the brittle House of Saud on-air for some weeks and know believe this is a significant moment.

The National Guard is loyal to the king until and if the frustration of an insurgency war wears down the lines of control.  The bank run cannot be contained.  But most specially the Tehran regime is boasting about its successes with the Houthis on state TV.  Military instability in the Gulf now matched by financial instability.  Who is loyal to a monarch when you are not paid?

Nukes.

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POTUS and the P5 + 1 will stall the game through the winter.  Tehran will provoke and taunt. The fact remains that Tehran is a nuke power already and a deal of this is show-boating to captive public opinion at home (Washington, Tehran, Berlin etc).

Riyadh is the new breaking point.  The money is not enough to pay for the debts when and if that bank run drains the princes.  The quote Friday was that a $3.5 Billion Islamic Bond, a sukuk, which was worth 110 cents on the dollar on Wednesday 25, and was worth 57 cents on the dollar on Friday 27 close.

What will it open trading Monday 30 in Asia?  Bank run.  No one is safe.  The White House is particularly uninformed about this crisis.  TARP for the Gulf?  Comment by Geithner?  POTUS speaks in support of Abu Dhabi?  Silence.